Remote ischemic preconditioning(RIPC) is emerging as an promising therapeutic paradigm to combat the detrimental impact of ischemic and reperfusion injury. In liver transplantation, ischemic and reperfusion injury severely impacts the post-surgery liver function and patient outcome. This prospective, double blind, randomized clinical trial is aimed to test the protective effect of RIPC against hepatic ischemic and reperfusion injury in pediatric liver transplantation.

Pediatric liver transplantation remains the major therapeutic strategy for pediatric biliary atresia patients. With almost 60 years of improvements and refinements in surgical techniques and perioperative management standards, liver transplantation is gaining popularity and gradually turns out to be the only curative treatment option for patients with irrevocable liver failure, such as childhood acute or chronic liver failure, inherited liver diseases and also biliary atresia. In liver transplantation, hepatic ischemic and reperfusion injury (HIRI) remains to be a critical clinical issue. Importantly, it is well known that the severity of HIRI may have fundamental impact on the transplanted organ function and long term graft survival. Furthermore, pediatric patients are more venerable and less tolerated to receive an ischemic donor liver due to their small body weight.Although detrimental impact of HIPI on graft function has long been recognized, little progress has been made to attenuate the severity of the HIPI compared to cardiac ischemic and reperfusion (IR) injury. In experimental animal models, remote ischemic preconditioning has been consistently shown to have beneficial effects. However, this protective paradigm has yet not been tested in liver transplantation patients in clinical scenario. Considering the growing number of pediatric patients undergoing liver transplantation and their possibly underdeveloped organ function, the investigators sought to determine whether remote ischemic preconditioning could ameliorate HIPI and improve long term graft/patient survival in pediatric liver transplantation patients using this double-blind randomized clinical trial.

The inclusion criteria were as follows:

1. American society of anesthesiologists score of I-III;
2. age of 3-72 months
3. elective living LT surgery.

The exclusion criteria were as follows:

1. peripheral vascular disease;
2. history of thromboembolism;
3. systemic or local infection before surgery;
4. autoimmune diseases;
5. severe congenital heart disease
6. history of LT.